I Hear Voices in My Head (Do you..?)

I hear voices in my head. Mostly my own voice, but sometimes other people’s voices too.

These are the voices of real people, not imaginary ones. Sometimes friends, family, other I people I’ve known, or people I’ve heard speak on podcasts or recordings.

I’ve asked people about this and received mixed answers. It seems some people’s brains work this way, while others don’t. I’m curious as to how common it is.

And in case you think I’m crazy or will be soon – I don’t actually hear the voices with my ears, like someone with schizophrenia or another mental illness might. This is called auditory hallucination. I’m talking about internal dialogue in voices other than my own.

Most of my thinking is auditory, as far as I can tell. In my mind there is consistent internal dialogue in my own voice, and it can take different tones or moods and different lines of thinking. There might be a few versions of “me” (usually 2-3 at most) that talk to one another.

Then sometimes other people chime in as well. Often these voices are repeating verbatim what I’ve heard that person say in real life. But sometimes my mind impersonates that person and their voice says something that I think they would say.

For example, I might have an idea in “my” voice. Then the voice of a skeptical friend comes in and questions the idea. We go back and forth, all inside my head, as my mind plays the friend playing devil’s advocate to the idea.

(If you experience this as well, I would watch out for it, because you can start attributing things to people they never said or never would say, just because you imagine it so convincingly.)

As an interesting aside, the voice inside your head that you hear as “your” voice is actually not your voice at all. This is why people dislike hearing recordings of their own voice: it always sounds different than we expect. The only person who hears the voice that you hear – both the internal version and the speaking out-loud version – is you!

But what’s your thinking like? Do you hear other people’s voices too, or just your own? Is it mostly auditory in your mind or something else?

Interesting, I don’t think I have this at all. If I am ever considering an idea I don’t think I imagine any situation with actors inside and dialogue. Just feels like thoughts or sometimes more clearly my own voice in my head.

Andras

Do you equally identify with all thoughts though? So you’ll see someone panhandling on the street; one thought might be give them some change, another thought might be ignore them and avoid eye contact. Would any of those seem more “you”?

I can relate to some aspect of what you’re saying, but I don’t think I would describe it similarly. I definitely have thoughts/cognitions that I attribute to different “selves”, especially when I’m dealing with internal conflict about a decision, and these will be in opposition to each other. I’ll be wanting to do something, than voices of self-doubt come in, followed by voices suggesting I let it all go and let it unfold, and this continues ad nauseam, until I do something or I forget about… I wouldn’t say it’s a constant thing though, but this could be due to a lack of awareness.

To your second point: I also sometimes feel I hear the voices of others (friends etc.), but I still feel as if I am the author of them, just speaking on their behalf.

Though now rereading my comment and your post, I feel there’s a high degree of congruence between our descriptions..

I have the same thing with decision making, different voices going back and forth for one course of action or another. It does sound pretty similar overall, although sometimes I get like “sound bites” that are exactly verbatim what I’ve heard someone say in real life.

Tanveer Singh Malik

I can relate to it completely, most of the time there are 2-3 voices (usually my own) continuously talking in my head about random things like may be a general event that already happened or about any person etc. Sometimes voice of my love too joins the discussion and i often find myself believing that she actually said all that though she never did.

This sometimes turns into a chaos and hinders my ability to focus even when i want to.

These days I’ve got the self-talk and negative thoughts pretty much under control. I only talk negatively to myself if it’s constructive. For example, if I actually did something stupid, I’ll say something like, “D you’re such and ass (then as if to look up to the score-judges and say), I’ll allow it.”

I only allow positive negative-talk. Kind of like harsh constructive criticism.

*switching gears*

“But sometimes my mind impersonates that person and their voice says something that I think they would say.”

“(If you experience this as well, I would watch out for it, because you can start attributing things to people they never said or never would say, just because you imagine it so convincingly.)”

As soon as I read those I thought about the way I sometimes think about my father. I love the guy. He was actually at my place yesterday. He was here in town for a funeral. He stayed the night at my new place. It was great to see him. He’s very supportive.

For some reason I ponder about things I think he would say to me. If I did something I think he would be displeased with I would, “start attributing things to…” him that he, “…never said or never would say.”

Perhaps that comes from my personal history growing up with him. Nothing terribly bad happened. But I do remember in the past the anger I had towards him. I’m sure that’s normal for any guy that grew up with a hard ass for a father.

One of the things that I am learning about myself (through recognising my inner dialogue, and trying to understand it) is that the anger left over from the past, towards my old man, must be forgiven. I’m 31 years old now. I’m constantly reminding myself that my parents did the best the could. And they did a hell of a job.

Being aware of all this has certainly helped me ‘grow up’ a bit. And it all started with recognising, accepting, then dissecting the thoughts in my head.

Interesting man, sounds very similar. I sometimes have the same thing with my Dad as well, in terms of hearing his voice or imagining things he might say. Provided your thinking is like this, I think it does make sense that some of the more frequent voices would be important people in your life like parents.

Agreed on forgiving things about the past too – there’s actually a section in the book I’m working on about that. Thanks for commenting D.

It makes me feel good knowing that it’s something quite common! hahaha. This happens to me sometimes, specially when I try to sleep (but I don’t have my mind very relaxed) and to meditate.

There are different voices telling things fucking nonsense, some of them are memories and others I guess that are created by my subconcient. It doesn’t depend on the fact of needing to take any decision, as some people said in the comments.

PS: I like a lot this site, I discovered it because of the 1P-LSD report!

“the voice inside your head that you hear as “your” voice is actually not your voice at all. This is why people dislike hearing recordings of their own voice: it always sounds different than we expect.”

That right there is the reason I am no longer camera shy, simple yet powerful realization. Thanks Aaron appreciate the insight! – INTJ (XNXX)

Lately I’ve been noticing the same, as i have multiple ego if i can say, the angry, the arrogant, the cool one .. etc.

and all have some pattern, in Gurdjief he advice self-observation all along the day, to figure out the different ego, and separate them, in order to clean every layer of the Ego, sometimes they don’t get along, they fight, sometimes they joke, i know it sound like inducing a pseudo-schizophrenia x) but before i wasn’t noticing what happens inside.

Some of these layer, are not me, i mean sometimes it’s Sartre with a nihilistic point of view , or Alan watts saying don’t worry man, or my father telling me I’ve told you so when i screw up x)

An example (for fun) if i’m walking near a homeless man, some random taught can pop out,

1- “it’s must be cold outside” a observing taught said. 2- another happy taught start singing “baby it’s cold outside” with a picture from the movie. 3- an old school stereotype taught said “it’s better to not give him money so he would work” 4- another socialist taught rise “OMG, that’s just sick mr Trump, you don’t think it’s better to get rid of all homeless man ?” 5- “just stop thinking too much and give the man some change” said an impatient taught. 6- here Sarter say “why ? why give money ? why do anything ? life in meaningless” 7- and her come my mother voice “don’t judge him, you can’t never know his story, give him a change if you have or at least say hey when you pass by” 8- a nasty taught pop out and said “Oh= look at that big ass” and her i forgot about the homeless man.

I’ve never pay attention to what happen inside until lately, from what i understood (from google) all those taught come from memory, we make some rule from our experience, build a model and repeat it, like a child who did eat let say for example (an apple) and it was bad, his mother said “I’ve told you so, it was an old apple” then the mind will develop some taught like (all apple are bad) and every time do something bad he will hear his mother saying I’ve told you so, or cat did bite once when i was kid, and then develop the idea that all cat may bite me, and i should be careful around them (fear & stress). without really never questioning why, we keep living with this nonsense rule that made them a 5 years old boy, imagine if we could back and find the root of all idea, we could be the best version of yourself, i mean like we could change our body like we want with workout, we could change our personality like we really want.

What i understand, is our mind is like a garbage really when we pay attention, full of external influence, religion, society, teachers .. etc and we should clean all that, not by just meditation, by by being aware (all the time) to understand how our mind work, and how everything we do is conditioning with external influence, (read some Gurdjief and Krishnamurti article that say the same) man now after thinking about this, i feel like nothing of me is original, i’m just the combination of everything I’ve heard or read, now i understand when i read we are not our ego (on an intellectual level) and one who want to know his true self, should really deconstruct all this pattern, it seems like if we are 20 years old, we need another 20 years to unlearn everything we know and discover out true self, find every idea and go back to it root to understand it and delete it.

Hope i’m not out of the subject, i just did lose the train of idea. Thanx Aaron for the article, Orwa.

Hey man, I liked your comment a lot. The way you describe it is exactly the same as it often happens in my head – you get an external input (seeing a homeless man or something else) and then your mind responds like a bunch of different characters (or caricatures) all talking to one another.

I think you’re right also that it all comes from past experience and input. We are just absorbing everything that’s happening around us and we build models and concepts and stories in our heads based on this input. And you’re absolutely right that this stuff is often nonsense that, while it may have been useful in the past, is no longer useful and does not serve us anymore.

Osho talks about a similar thing, that the mind is an “agent of society” inside of you – just the sum of external conditioning. They also talk about the concept of “uprooting” in Buddhism – kind of similar to what you’re saying about deconstructing patterns and following them back to their beginnings. Very interesting. You are welcome man and thanks for reading.

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Hey, my name is Aaron and welcome to my site.

I created Freedom & Fulfilment to write about my experience and share ideas on self improvement, spirituality, and how we can build the best lives for ourselves and others.